How Ullapool became the centre of a £100m cocaine smuggling scandal

THE story of how Ullapool found itself in the centre of Britain’s largest drug smuggling operation is being retold in a new BBC Alba documentary.

In 1991, Ullapool was rocked to the core when police seized over £100million worth of drugs just north of the Wester Ross fishing village. Now, 34 years later, BBC Alba pieces together the story which placed the Highlands at the centre of an international drug smuggling ring in Cocain is na Klondykers.

Throughout the three-part documentary series, premiering at 9pm on February 18, journalist Anna MacLeod sets out to discover how a picturesque and remote harbour town became the scene of the biggest drug bust of its time.

Against the fascinating backdrop of Soviet fish processing factory ships, the series will piece together a complex web of criminal activity that linked the Highlands of Scotland to Spain’s ‘Costa Del Crime’ and South America’s notorious Colombian crime gangs, built on first-hand testimony and social archive.

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Maintaining its infamous title to this day as one of the most audacious drug smuggling operations in British history, viewers will also get an inside look at ‘Operation Klondyke’, the multi-agency, multi-million-pound surveillance operation that led to the arrests of six men. And what happened when the man behind it all disappeared into the ether while awaiting extradition to stand trial in Scotland.

Delving in the murky underworld, Anna will travel from the oil rigs of Aberdeen to the iconic rock of Gibraltar in search of crime kingpin Julian Chisholm — the mastermind of the plan. But with a Houdini-esque escape from a high security Spanish prison, is he dead or alive?

Journalist and presenter Anna MacLeod said: “Chisholm came to Aberdeen and went to work on the rigs like many other people from all over Scotland and the UK. But Chisholm took a different path.

“The eighties drug scene was changing rapidly and Julian Chisholm opted to put himself right in the middle of it. And I wanted to understand what made him do that. I wanted to get a better understanding of the world in which Chisholm was operating.”

With incredible access to those involved in pursuing the smugglers across the globe, the series will trace a cat and mouse style operation which often felt as though the gang was ahead of law enforcement at almost every turn. Using a rich layer of social history, we see how the breaking down of borders gave untold advantages to the criminal fraternity, and how the north-west coast of Scotland offered the ideal landscape with islands, inlets and coves to hide contraband.

The first episode of Cocain is na Klondykers premieres on BBC ALBA and BBC iPlayer on February 18 at 9pm, in Gaelic with English subtitles, with weekly episodes airing each Tuesday. Watch live or on demand: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00285qr